Throughout the year, I’ve been kicking around different ideas regarding the link between ‘consolidation’ of an idea and ‘notes to my future self’. These terms are being pulled from the Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (BTC) framework though can be found across many disciplines. What I’m really looking for is stickiness. How do we get a new idea, strategy or process to stick with our learners?
In August, I participated in a BTC conversation that included Peter Liljedahl. Through the Zoom-session, Peter described a format for note making that he was hopeful would gain traction. I believe the intent of the note making format was for students to engage with the ideas versus blindly copying or simply gluing a page into their notebook. In this format, errors would be introduced and students needed to find and fix. Yay! I went off and retooled notes for students to have them engage. Was the stickiness factor any higher? I don’t have any data to back it up but the feeling I had was that it was not. The students hopped through the ‘find and fix’ hoops and moved on. Where was that stick? That consolidation of making new material their own?
I’m going to fumble a bit here as I work to inch my own thinking forward. A few starting points as I circle around the stickiness issue:
- My room is full of unique learners. By grade 7, they have been making meaning of this world and the mathematics in it for a long time. How do new ideas fit into their way of doing things?
- Some of the ‘new’ things that we do in a mathematics classroom may be procedural in nature. For example, many of my students are building their graphing skills. An area of challenge is the set-up: getting axes on a coordinate grid, meeting at the origin, two equally spaced axes and labels. In this case, am I looking at habit formation à la James Clear and Atomic Habits?
- What time frame does each learner require to have something new stick?
Dr. Maria del Rosario Zavala writes the following in a blog post as we think about sense-making and learners:
So rather than looking for the holes in kids knowledge, teachers should be listening and looking for what sense-making kids are engaged in, and what makes sense to the student.
We’re not hunting for misconceptions but striving to deeply know and understand our students so that we can help them progress to the next step in their journey of mathematics. The BTC framework promotes thinking and as this burden is shifted to students, the space for teachers to engage in small, meaningful conversations increases and helps us do the listening and looking that Dr. Zavala mentions. Meet students where they are and build upon that foundation.
Is any of mathematics related to habit formation? A quick search online results in countless pages linking habits ‘of mind’ to mathematics. Does equating the concept of habits of mind to James Clear’s habits make you cringe or is there a solid connection? In his blog (jamesclear.com) has a post titled How to start new habits that actually stick and he shares this graphic on the steps towards habit formation.
To reiterate the caption on Mr. Clear’s image, he says that our brains go through these steps in the same order each time. How might this play out in a mathematics classroom? I’ve gone backwards in my attempt to think this through in an attempt to think about how to get to the response or the barriers that may be in place.
- Reward – a stronger understanding of a mathematical concept / success in demonstrating an idea
- Response – Performing the habit. I can correctly set up a proportion to solve. OR My graph is properly set up with horizontal and a vertical axes that are equally spaced and I know which axis should hold my independent variable.
- Craving – hmmm….how do we trigger this? Again, each student is so different. In some, the hint of new information is enough to unlock a flurry of activity that sets that learner down their path. In others, mysterious mathematics has been enough to blunt the craving. The craving is long buried under a pile of attempts that have (maybe?) gone unnoticed or supported.
- Cue – how do we activate the brain? Is a problem enough? Yeah…I have to graph this relationship so let me get started.
I’m starting to be left with more questions than I started with. The ‘cue’ is there. I like to think that most of my students are turned on in class and when faced with a task such as creating a graph to show a relationship between variables or to represent data from an investigation, they move forward. The habit is there. They know that something needs to be done but they might not be sure on exactly how to do it. So…what moves them forward?
Back to stickiness. I’m realizing that my students have developed a macro-habit in that in a graphing situation they are cued and understand that a graph needs to be created. Some are confident and secure in moving forward with this process but others just are not that sure, yet. Time. This is the element that is slippery and changes so much for each student.
Where does this journey tie into student note-making? I’m feeling that notes are elevated in status when they are constantly referred to. This is a habit that we can make progress on. Are students accustomed to leaning on their own notes? Do they regularly open their math notebooks to refresh their thinking or to add more detail to existing thoughts? This is the habit that will link consolidation to note-making. Students need to be cued for much longer than I’ve anticipated to open their previous thinking up and to use this information. This is a habit that they will carry on for years as they learn to rely on their own thinking and refine the way that they make notes of situations. We can continue to tweak the format of notes (and yes, students should engage with them during the creation) but to link consolidation to notes, we also need to build the habits of referring back, revising and acting on the past thoughts. The reward will be an increase in confidence and a another step in the journey of learning.
Finding the Process 